Fishing for Schools

 

Plath; Hughes, Heaney…

what do they teach?

If we’re schooled… comprehensive,

not comprehensively,

gutters, dustcarts,

do we fail,

are we scrapped,

unable to relate?

 

The grammar boys/girls,

clever/smart kids,

range rovers and volvos,

gymkhana and foreign holidays,

pretty little ballerinas,

rugger and Reuters,

they know the answers,

we (in-comprehensively)

misunderstand.

 

We get limericks

Eff and cee words,

the French for vagina

German for penis

then try to rhyme them.

Shame for the poor kids

– that gulf –

might as well be as far as Mars.

 

The desert between,

sinking sand,

swallowing dreams,

summer storms,

blasting grit between the teeth,

blighting growth,

the gulf widens with every grain,

fish swim,

just in opposite directions.

 

 

Awake

 

wake with words

sleep with verbs

antecedents…

to sentences

verdant verbiage

 

subtle synonym

sinuous, velvet

antediluvian

coarsely comparative

innately intuitive

 

these fundamentals

steaming fissures

aspirations

magmatic eruptions

flow, pull, inspire.

 

 

Broc Silva is a country-born Hampshire child. ‘Home’ is the Isle of Wight. Poorly educated, yet catching up. Poor sight, terrible hair, and with chips on both shoulders, he contends with the voice: that black shroud that’s constantly nagging. He fights back with words; prose, poetry and short stories.

 

Featured photo: ‘SJSA Grade Six – The Year I Rebelled‘ © Michael 1952